


Made Their Mark

by mossy_kit



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: (not a lot of it but it is mentioned), Baltimore Crabs (Blaseball Team), Gen, Kennedy Loser - Freeform, Season 2, The Olde One (Blaseball) - Freeform, carcinization, cw: blood, cw: light body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28920075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mossy_kit/pseuds/mossy_kit
Summary: Something’s wrong again, something new is changing, something’s always changing, isn’t it?(Baltimore tries to claim its newest player.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	Made Their Mark

**Author's Note:**

> Cw: light body horror themes, some mentions of blood, skin picking
> 
> Crabs fans: shoutout for having extremely cool lore! carcinization is just so narratively interesting - especially since Dot's already reeling from another blessing here. 
> 
> thanks for reading!

It’s four thirty in the morning, and Dot’s hands are roving across their shoulders, clawing at their back. Something’s catching on their sheets, something strange and too sharp, something wrong – something’s wrong and it’s not just the fingers even though those are so wrong too, even though it’s been nearly two months now and they should be getting used to them, should be appreciating the gifts they were given. But they’re always in the wrong places, and that’s enough to deal with, and now they’re awake and they can just tell by the way their skin is crawling that something’s wrong again, that something new is changing, something’s always changing, isn’t it?

Their fingernails are too short to catch it, whatever it is, and they can’t quite tell where it’s supposed to be. They draw blood, somewhere, trying to find the edge of it, and they almost can’t see the colour in the low light, but they can feel it on too many fingers, and suddenly that’s wrong too, the way it’s kind of smeared, the way it slides between skin and skin, and they’re caught between the fear of whatever strange thing has taken up residence in them, somewhere between their shoulder blades, and the blood on their back and on their hands and so they get up and go to the bathroom and throw themselves into the shower, all the lights off so they don’t have to see it, not yet, if something’s really wrong.

It’s carcinization, their slowly waking mind tells them. They’ve been in Baltimore long enough, maybe – was two months enough? If they’re being honest, they hadn’t asked, hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe they’ll get away without any more gods rearranging their body in their own interests, if they don’t invite it, don’t allow it, like if they just will it hard enough, the rest of them will remain their own.

But they stand underneath water that’s almost hot enough to scald, and they reach around again, try to root out that miniscule spot that might have been the start of a shell, like if they could find it early enough and rip it out, then at least they’d be safe. They grasp and grasp and grasp, and they’re trying not to picture it spreading, rendering more of their body foreign to them, linking them permanently to another team they’ll just leave next election.

They’re remembering Kennedy Loser sitting down next to them one day during a break in practice, sort of gingerly, as if they were some kind of skittish animal ready to bolt. Which they’re not, but… then again, it’s not like they hadn’t already started leaving practices as soon as they were over, showing up at games exactly on time, for all he knew that _was_ how they were.

“I know you’ve heard of it, the, you know, change that most of us go through,” he said, sort of half indicating the thin pincers that split out of his sides, clicked them a few times for emphasis, “and I know it can be sort of difficult, and I just wanted to let you know that uh, if you want to talk to anyone about it, we’re all here for you.”

“I haven’t been carcinized,” they said, flatly, half a statement and half a prayer, refusing to look at Loser directly. “Thank you, though.” They added. It wasn’t like Loser didn’t seem nice, he did, but…

“Okay,” he said, “I…” he had started, and then trailed off, and whatever he was thinking had been left unsaid.

At last, in the present, their fingernails catch something, and with a wrench, they pry it away from their skin. They feel blood, again, but it flows away with the water now as they bring the little flake of chitin to their face, try to inspect it as well as they can in the little sliver of light that puddles in from the street.

They sit for a while, after, the offending intrusion wrapped up in a little piece of cloth on a table, and wait until the thought works its way through them, that they’re okay, they are, really. They dress the cut carefully, so small in the aftermath, try to be gentle as the adrenalin drains from their limbs, and the pain starts to filter back in properly.

By six AM, they’re out in the chill, running through nearly abandoned side streets towards the subtle tug of the Bay. Even they, through the cotton-wrapping obscurement of the other gods’ demanding voices, can hear the Olde One. Of course they can - they are a Crab, aren’t they?

When they arrive at the shore, the waves gently lapping against the rocks, they take a moment to just breathe, let the salty air chase away the last of the panic and replace it with clarity. Then, from their pocket, they take the piece of chitin, the little flake that isn’t them, and just for a moment roll it between their thumb and forefinger, feeling its sharp edges. And then they take a good, long moment finding the right stone on the beach, one with just the right depth of fault. Once they find one, the weight of it solid in their hand, they take the shell and wedge it into the crack, until it’s settled deep beneath the surface. Then, for a moment seeing that strange pitcher’s knowledge filter back over their thoughts, they wind up and launch it deep into the Bay, its flight a gentle arc that ends in an almost soundless entry into the still waters.

“Don’t touch me.” Dot says, watching the ripples spread, feeling rather than hearing the faraway displeasure of the Olde One. “I don’t want your _gifts_.”

(the strange gills and barnacles of Halifax do not even attempt to leave their mark. It is only far later, years even, that they wonder whether being claimed by their team might be just as much a kindness as a horror. Being a part of something like all this; well, doesn’t that etch itself into you just as surely as the shell or the sea?)

(the night before the Crabs ascend, Dot finds a little spot of smooth, cool shell, tucked behind their left ear, and suddenly, it does not feel very foreign at all.)


End file.
